Sliders: I Don't Get It

[original6]

Quote:

Games in general are just starting to get real physics engines so you are right about this. However, the real hurdle to fully realistic gameplay is AI. Your theory of making games totally realistic with AI that just gets smarter is indeed what these guys should strive for. However, AI is insanely complex in team sports games and I don't think we've reached a point where totally realistic AI can even be programmed, much less handled by today's systems. While the PS3 and 360 have considerably more power than their predecesors and that helps with graphics, their added power is a drop in a bucket when compared to what would be needed for truely realistic and sophisticated AI.

I'm not asking for super-realistic ai, just believeable and basic ai that plays like the real game. I don't get how one hockey game can get something right and the other can't. 2k9 has believable goalies, yet 09's are robots. 09 thinks realistic defense is backpedaling into the zone and setting up like you're defending on a powerplay. In contrast, 2k9 thinks that defense is about checking the crap out of anything that moves. I just don't understand how a game like 2k3 can get pretty dang close to believable hockey ai and 6 years later, we're getting what we see now in 2k9 and 09. It just boggles my mind.

Here's another case in point. I played Winning Eleven on the old Xbox console and that game played dang realistic soccer, and we're talking about 22 players on the field at once. The game had only one slider that I recall, and that was the difficulty. You could also adjust the length of the halves in real time, but other than that, there weren't any sliders to speak of. It didn't need any! The game had realistic physics and was fun. I don't understand why playing video game hockey with real physics and realistic gameplay wouldn't be fun? I mean, if you don't enjoy real hockey, why would you play it in video game form? I don't enjoy basketball or baseball, therefore I don't play it on my console.

You know, I wouldn't mind the sliders so much if the game was based upon realism and started there at default settings. However, it's not and with the lack of information about what the sliders actually do, slider adjustment becomes a maddening game in and of itself. It's pure laziness on the part of the programmers, plain and simple. I don't buy the "customization" argument one bit. If they really want the customer to be able to tweak the game to their liking, offer some information about what these sliders and game adjustments really do. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, it's all for show and just put in the game as a "feature".

Alrighty, enough ranting for a while. hehe

[dkgojackets]

Quote: Originally Posted by original6

Here's another case in point. I played Winning Eleven on the old Xbox console and that game played dang realistic soccer, and we're talking about 22 players on the field at once. The game had only one slider that I recall, and that was the difficulty. You could also adjust the length of the halves in real time, but other than that, there weren't any sliders to speak of. It didn't need any! The game had realistic physics and was fun. I don't understand why playing video game hockey with real physics and realistic gameplay wouldn't be fun? I mean, if you don't enjoy real hockey, why would you play it in video game form? I don't enjoy basketball or baseball, therefore I don't play it on my console.

I played winning eleven on xbox, and the lack of sliders is what made me stop. I started a master league and it was fun for a while, but eventually as I got better and my players got better I was winning every game in the 4-0 range on the highest difficulty it allowed and there was nothing I could do to fix the opponent AI or tweak manual/assisted settings like fifa allows.